Americas

This week in Keeping Tabs: the former governor of the Bank of England on value and values, The New Republic on law and value, reminiscing about the last crisis, and a pub snack en vogue.

Nio has launched a US follow-on offering that could raise up to $2.71bn, becoming the third Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker to tap the equity market in less than two weeks.

With returns on developed market bonds being squeezed as never before, debt analysts are heralding emerging markets as the place for investors to be in 2021. Yet the faster the global economic recovery, the more vulnerable EM fixed income will be to what has often been its downfall: any signal of tighter global liquidity conditions, write Mariam Meskin and Oliver West.

As year-end approaches and investors look for a breather, Latin America’s regular issuers usually spend December preparing for the traditional January funding round. But two of the region’s most prolific borrowers could not resist the historically low funding costs on offer this week, tapping existing bonds to buy back shorter-dated paper.

CVS Health Corp jumped at the opportunity to conduct a liability management exercise this week, as US corporate bond issuance began to tail off amid signs of investor caution in the run-up to the year’s end.

China’s Xiaopeng Motors, an electric vehicle (EV) maker, leveraged on a big boost in interest in new energy stocks from investors to raise $2.16bn from a follow-on offering of its American Depositary Shares. Jonathan Breen reports.

Latin American power generation company EnfraGen debuted in the international bond markets on Wednesday, benefiting from the strong performance from the region’s last power sector issue to price inside where some investors were expecting — despite a leverage ratio of nine times.

UEP Penonomé, the company behind Panama’s first wind farm, turned to bond markets for the first time on Wednesday for a $262.664m senior secured amortising bond.

Colombia’s finance ministry said on Wednesday evening that it had taken the “first step to entering the bond market for sustainable development” after Congress approved the issue of thematic bonds.

Singapore-based consumer internet company Sea, whose New York-listed shares have soared by more than 400% this year, is looking to take advantage of that positive sentiment to raise around $2bn from a new equity offering.

The coronavirus crisis, new challengers, technology and capital requirements threaten to shake up the banking sector — and banks are likely to shift business models substantially, according to management consultancy firm Arthur D Little.

Investment bankers have piled up heaps of revenue for their firms this year, but their employers may feel the need not to be too generous with bonuses in the first few months of next year.